


Furiosa

by eag



Series: Fortunae Plango Vulnera [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Bartertown, Drivers and Lancers, Father figure Ace, Gen, Human Trafficking, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Other, Scars, Slavery, Suicide Attempt, Survival, The Citadel, War Boy Furiosa, War Boy Society, War Boys, War Boys Showing Affection, War Pup Furiosa, War Pup Training, War Pups - Freeform, War Rig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4246143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eag/pseuds/eag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fallen from grace, Furiosa must find a new way to survive.</p><p>Sketches of Furiosa's life after her expulsion from the 'high life'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Furiosa

Ace could hear the screams over the hydraulics.

“Scram, all of you. Lesson's over.” A handful of War Pups scattered in Ace's wake as he left the room and headed down the hall. Whimpers punctuated by screams and he followed the sound, curious. Wasn't in the direction of the infirmary, or the wheel shrine. Wasn't in the direction of the mess. Didn't sound like a man's voice. Maybe it was one of the Pups. He couldn't watch them all at once; they were spread out everywhere through the Citadel, some working in the mechanic's shops, some working in the mills, still others serving the Immortan and the Sons. But they were his responsibility.

The hallway tilted upwards as he walked; maybe it had something to do with the Imperators, but if they were causing such a racket, he couldn't concentrate to work...

“Oi!” Ace barged in. Something was going on, something he didn't like, and he hauled one War Boy off another. “What'dya think you're-”

Ace found himself face to face with the Prime. The Prime glared, furious, and Ace flinched back, surprised. This was Immortan Joe's second in command, the most powerful and high-ranking of the War Boys. Ace couldn't help but glance down, and noticed the man's pants were down, sagged around his ankles, and Ace caught a glimpse of the Prime's erect dick before looking away. On the ground in a huddled heap, a slight and slender form, shaking and trembling, and for a moment, he didn't know what to think, other than that it was bleeding.

“What do you think you're doing, interrupting me like this?” The Prime snarled at him, shoving him back, but Ace stood his ground. 

“Tryin to train my War Pups, that's what I'm doin. Can't do it with all this racket. Louder than the Revshop. Louder 'n the machines.” 

“Get out of here, Ace. This ain't your place. You're in charge of the Pups, not my business.”

“No?” And Ace's eyes darted down. A girl? A boy? It was hard to tell, only whoever it was, they weren't dressed like a Pup or a Boy or anything else he could recognize. Not even a Wretched, but something else entirely. Improvising, he stepped forward, reached down, and grabbed the figure by their wrist. “Think this is my business.”

“What are you doing?” The Prime snapped forward, but Ace had one boot on his trailing belt, and the man stumbled, tripping over his pants, falling onto his backside with an undignified thump.

“Tryin to train my War Pups, that's what.” Ace dragged Furiosa up; she could barely stand. Livid bruises stood on her face; her neck and shoulders were black and blue with the mark of bites. “And this is one of 'em.”

“You can't do this. You're just a damned Half-life.”

“That's Half-life Noble to you, Prime, and don't you forget it.”

“I outrank you. She's mine.”

“This here's a War Pup, and Pups are my business” Before the Prime could get back up onto his feet, Ace hauled her up against his hip and putting his arm tight around her, walked away, as fast as he could.

*****

Ace took her to the wastewater catchment, where excess water collected from above. Green light filtered in through the bars from the farm above, and she peered up, curious at the hanging green that had wormed its thirsty way down through the bars. Here the water was deep enough to swim in. Sometimes on a rare hot day, the boys would all jump in, but today it was empty. 

She glanced at him as she washed off the blood; he was looking away, disinterested. So maybe now was a good time. She started into the water. The pool deepened quickly; was already around her waist. Hopefully it would be quick; Miss Giddy said it wasn't a good way to die, but it was a way. A way out. 

Somehow he heard her, whether by accident or providence, and turned around.

Furiosa had never been lucky.

“You can swim?”

“No.” Her voice was harsh to her ears.

“Then stay away from that.” His voice was absolute, like iron and grit, and flinching, she shied away from the edge and finished her ablutions.

Cleansed, he took her to the armory. Shuffling through the shelves, he found her a pair of thick canvas trousers and a pair of boots to fit. Quickly, she hiked up the trousers under her skirt, fumbling with the belts, but then once she was done, he gestured at her.

“Off with that.”

“No.”

He reached out and yanked it off her girt hips; the damp, flimsy material tore easily, and he tossed it aside. “You'll thank me for it later. That'd catch on a spike, get caught in a wheel. Right kill you, is what it'd do.”

And so it went, no more than a rag, picked up by a War Pup and taken away to who knows where. But then the belts around her waist, the firm leather against her hips that held the trousers up, it felt like armour, protecting all the things she didn't want to be reminded of. She felt at the hard edges of the leather with her fingers.

Her beautiful dark hair went, faster than she anticipated, and she was shorn in a handful of expert strokes. She touched her own head cautiously, running her hand over the bare scalp and when she turned, Ace could see her brand, standing red against her pale skin. It made him touch his own, thoughtfully. His was carved deep, meant to be seen through the white, even as hers was barely a kiss of hot iron against her tender skin. A Pup cleaned up the mess underfoot.

“Wearin the brand already saves us the trouble of heatin it up. Come 'ere.” 

He sat her down on a bench carved of rock, and she flinched as he sat down beside her. Under the white, scars marred his arms, his face. He might have almost been a handsome man, with his pale gray eyes, but for those scars. That didn't keep her from fearing him though, with his hard calloused hands that could go around her entire arm.

She wondered what he wanted, trembling, trying not to pull away, just like she had been taught.

“All right, it's time.” 

She swallowed, feeling the fear build until she could feel the beginnings of a sob choking her throat, but then he gestured to a War Pup. The boy brought him a metal container, and he mixed the white with dribs of water, crushing lumps of white powder between his fingers, measuring carefully with a sharp eye. It looked like a slurry when it was fully mixed, and he gestured for her to start smearing it over herself.

The white was cold but it warmed up quickly against her skin. It stole the color from her body; it covered the bruises, the brand, almost entirely. Covered her face. Her arms. Her shorn head. Every bit of visible skin. Impersonally, he dabbed the white onto a few patches of bare skin that she missed, a little bit behind her ear, a spot at the back of her head. Someone passing through pointed out the white bodice on her torso, the last sign she had been someone other than a War Pup.

“None of your business what folks wanna cover up,” Ace snarled, and the War Boy shied away.

*****

He pointed to a corner; there were some blankets, rough-woven, tangled haphazardly on clean sand forming a deep nest. Furiosa met the man's pale gaze with her own, resolute, despite her trembling. She shook her head firmly.

“You wanna blanket, you better go get one fast. Pups're coming.” And with that, he left her wondering what that meant, until a moment later, the padding of feet, some bare, some booted, filled the room and she found herself swarmed with War Pups, at least a dozen if not more, of an assortment of ages, chattering and laughing, clambering into their nest. 

“Told you.” The man cleared his throat loudly, and the boys quieted. “Who are we?”

“War Pups!” They shouted, in awkwardly timed tandem.

“And who's this?” He gave her a little shove, pushing her toward them, and she stumbled, but when she did, he caught her shoulder, steadying her.

There was a long moment of quiet, as the boys stared at each other and Ace, wondering what they were supposed to say.

“A new War Pup.” Ace pointed to the nest. “Get in, find a place. Time for bed.”

“Aw. Ace, you promised us a story...”

“Not another word from you, Nux.” Ace ran his hand over the boy's smooth head affectionately. “Ain't in the mood for stories. Now get. Bed, all of you.”

 

“You're awful big for a War Pup,” the boy whispered against her ear, and she squirmed, trying to get comfortable in this seething, over-warm tangle of limbs that was all sharp elbows and knees, without even a scrap of blanket to protect her bruised skin from touching all these strange bodies. 

Did he have a name? She couldn't remember.

“You're awful...” and she couldn't think of a good retort to continue.

“No I'm not, you are.” The boy giggled. 

“What's your name?”

“It's...Furiosa.”

“That's your name? Funny name. Why aren't you a War Boy yet? You're big enough.”

“I just started.”

“The Ace says it's hard to start if you're too old. He says...”

“Go to sleep,” Ace growled. He was at the edge of the pile, closest to the hallway, dug into the sand without a blanket for his stark bare shoulder. Two boys were curled up against the curve of his back and one behind his knees, and whatever it was he wanted from her, it wasn't what she thought it was going to be.

Suddenly all the memories of the day collapsed on her, and she felt the weight of it against her chest, strangling out the air from her lungs. 

“Don't cry.” The boy offered her a corner of the blanket, and she wiped her eyes, fighting back sobs, the shuddering fear, the pain deep in her body. The disgrace, the fall, the expulsion from Paradise. The blackened forehead of the Prime, his hard grasping hands, his... 

“Everyone cries their first night but then it gets better,” the boy whispered. “'less you're Notch and you cry every night.”

“I do not.”

“Hey! I said get to sleep.” Ace snarled, and a few minutes later she could hear him snoring softly. Unlike the Immortan, who...

She shuddered.

“Better do what the man says,” she said softly, mostly to herself, and she closed her eyes.

*****

“Watch.” Ace pointed her to a bench of stone, and she sat. A handful of her fellow Pups sat with her, swinging their feet against the stone, boasting and gossiping about some little jobs here and there that they had picked up around the Revshops. She didn't know their names, but had a guess at the one called Notch; he was the meek one with the notch clipped out of the top of his left ear.

A boy clambered onto the car in the middle of the room, hauling himself up onto the roof while Ace fussed with an array of pedals, connected to the car by thick black cables. 

“Ready! We're heading out.” Ace tapped a pedal with his foot and the car came to life, jolting with a hum. The boy grinned, a sharp look of determination in his eyes and he slid himself in one smooth motion toward the back of the car where rails had been added. He glanced over at her briefly, eyesockets darkened with grease, and Furiosa found the sight both repellent and strangely curious.

“Convoy's moved off to the left and your Driver ain't noticed yet. What're you gonna do to tell 'em?”

“Bang it twice!” The boys shouted. 

The boy banged the top of the car twice, and Ace hit another pedal; the car swung violently and the boy on top slid with it without losing his grip. Furiosa flinched back as the car suddenly headed toward her, but it stayed put, shaking and shuddering, the engine growling like a tamed beast on a leash.

Everyone laughed, even Ace, who chuckled to himself, a wry look of amusement on his face. 

“This don't go nowhere!” A boy nudged her ribs with his elbow, giggling madly. “It's on a track for training, dummy.”

“Don't laugh so hard, Morsov, you peed yourself when the Ace did it to you.”

“Did you pee yourself, Furiosa?”

“Enough!” Ace shouted, and the boys quieted. “We see Buzzards. They're comin at us with all they got. What're we gonna do?”

“Fang it!”

Ace tapped another pedal; the car tilted forward sharply and the boy slid with it, catching himself neatly on the lip of the top door, the tips of his boots dug into the frame of the back window.

“Buzzard shot your driver dead.” Ace hit some pedals, one after another, and the car began to swerve back and forth erratically. “Now what?”

“Take the wheel!” A chorus of shouts, and the boy swung himself into the driver-side window, pushing aside a heavy dummy. He quickly got himself situated, and shifted the car into neutral, where it steadied and straightened.

“Attaboy, Nux. Good work, nice job. Your turn, Furiosa.”

She stood and walked up to the car. The boy who was on the car clapped her shoulder as he slid out the window. “Hang onto the rails,” he whispered. “Boots on the frame. Don't try anything fancy.”

Putting her foot up onto the open window, she paused, unsure if she could haul herself up.

“Come on, get on up.”

“I don't...” But then she glanced up and saw Ace's pale eyes on her, and then fear moved her faster than anything she had ever reckoned with, and clumsily, she crawled up on the roof of the car. Hesitantly, she tried to emulate the boy, sliding back toward the rails cautiously and when she caught hold of them, she held on tightly, her knuckles white with tension.

“Ready? We're heading out!” The car came to life under her body, and she yelped.

The boys laughed, but then one, two, all of them started shouting to her, chanting, pumping their fists in the air.

“Come on! Furiosa! Hang on!”

“Convoy's moved off.” She felt the car swing under her with a jolt, but she hung on. The voice of the boys was loud in her ears. Furiosa! Furiosa! She banged the roof with her fist, two hard punches and the savage hammering beat of her own heart nearly drowned out the sound.

“Buzzards are coming!” The Ace tapped a pedal and the car lurched forward, Furiosa with it.

“Fang it!”

“Thunder up!”

“Here we go!”

“Furiosa!”

“Furiosa!”

“Furiosa!”

So this was the mystery, and she its initiate. The pounding of her heart, the pounding roar of the car, the shouting of the boys.

After that day, there was nothing she couldn't do.

*****

“You can't keep her by your side all the time. Sooner or later, the Bartertown run's gonna come up and you're gonna be on the Rig and she's gonna be all alone in the Citadel.” Ace looked up from his food, the common meal they all ate, chickpeas, quinoa, squash, and greens, soaked and cooked into a mush, seasoned with coarse salt and ladled out by the bowlful.

The Prime glared down at both of them in turn. She was different now; her body seemed firmer, stronger. Harder. There were muscles in her arms that weren't there before. It wasn't the body of the girl that had lost favor by the Immortan. The Redeemer's scraps, maybe, but good scraps and tasty nonetheless.

“You can't watch her forever,” the Prime hissed to Ace as he walked away.

The boys muttered amongst themselves; when had the Prime ever talked to anyone like this? Did this mean the Ace was in trouble? But he was the Ace, he'd never done anything wrong by them.

Furiosa darted Ace a nervous glance, and he shrugged.

“Can't watch you forever, Furiosa. That's true.”

“Then that means...” And she shuddered, putting down her spoon.

“Whatever it means, it don't mean I can't think ahead.” Ace gave her a wink, and tapped his grease-blackened forehead. “Got some ideas.”

“You won't let him...he can't. He can't take this from me!”

“Nah, he can't hurt you. Heard it myself from the boys; the Immortan thinks it's funny you're a Pup. Wants to see you climb a rig someday, be a War Boy for true. Ride the Fury Road. Said he'd even make you an Imperator himself, if you proved worthy. How's that for you?”

She flinched away from that name, refusing to hear it, and changed the subject. “So what do I do?”

“Keep training.” Ace scraped the bowl clean with the edge of a finger, getting every last morsel, his eyes on the powerful back of the Prime as the man swaggered through the crowd. “Keep scrapping. Get better. Keep going.”

*****

“Told ya you couldn't always keep her by your side. Told ya you can't watch her forever.” The day of the Bartertown run came with the waxing of the harvest moon, and Ace was going through his final gear check as the Prime came over. The Prime left the Citadel only as part of the Immortan Joe's retinue; it was up to Half-life Nobles, War Boys, and lower-ranking Imperators to do the routine work, running goods between their brother settlements and Bartertown. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Ace straightened up; this was the big job of the season, and he wasn't about to trash it. The rig was loaded up with goods, tons of it, and they expected to buy a lot this year with what they grew, with what they pumped and drilled.

“While you're gone, I'm gonna take her and...”

A familiar voice rang through the air, above the roar of engines, the clang of machinery, the grunts of the Treadmill Rats. “Ace! War Rig's loaded and ready. They're sending it down any minute now.” And the Prime looked over; hanging to the back of an escort car as it went down on the lift was Furiosa, a bevy of long lances within reach of her hand.

“You miserable, pathetic...you can't do that!” The Prime looked over the edge as Furiosa and her team were lowered.

“Sure I can. That one's a War Boy now, recently promoted. Ready to ride to Valhalla like the rest of us,” Ace said mildly. “Ain't that right, Furiosa?”

With a brittle, humorless grimace of a smile on her face, Furiosa lifted up her arms, making the sign of the V8 with her hands, lambent eyes under her blackened forehead fixed on the Prime, as if she could burn a hole through him with her stare.

Furious, the Prime gave Ace a shove, and he ignored it, clambering onto the rig as it moved forward toward the precipice, ready to be lowered.

“Not gonna waste a good Lancer.” Ace looked over to the balcony where Immortan Joe would soon make his appearance. “Ain't you supposed to be up there, Prime Imperator?”

“This isn't over.” The Prime disappeared into the crowd, and Ace briefly collapsed against the comforting bulk of the rig, willing the shakes away. So they had made it past this Buzzard; where would the next one come from? But then he had to focus on his work, so he set all his troubles aside.

*****

Furiosa leaned casually against the Lancer's basket, the back perch, as the road bumped under them. Ace had trained them well; nothing on the road was quite as violent as the training car; even when she started live practice with the War Boys, it wasn't nearly as difficult as training with Ace.

The vast waste opened up to her, and her breath caught at its early morning beauty. The land was tinted pink and orange, a great flat emptiness, distant mountains looming bruise purple just beyond the horizon. The cold wind sliced against her bare skin like a knife, so cold that it tricked her body into feeling hot. She stepped side to side to move her blood again, and with the rising sun, she warmed up. 

Already she was forgetting her cohort of War Pups; she had been with them for a couple months and only managed to learn a handful of names in the crowd. But even those names were getting harder and harder to remember; her concerns these days were centered on pistons and valves and bolts and washers and their relative positions in the vast machine of the Car.

It was a quick and painless transition into the society of War Boys. When Ace brought her around to the Revshops and announced her promotion, introducing her as the newest member of their tribe, there was no particular sentiment to it, merely business as usual; the men listened, cheered briefly, and went back to work as soon as the announcement was over. She had expected...she wasn't sure what she had expected, but quiet acceptance was not that something.

Half-life Nobles trained them as Ace had trained her. They managed the Revshops, drove the training cars down in the waste, taught fundamentals of driving. Here and there the other War Boys gave her advice; this one was good, he was trustworthy and smart to boot but harder than a stone and half as nice. Don't be alone with that one, he'll try to pull some weird things, he likes 'em young and he's gotten a boy or two in the past. Another was mostly harmless, but don't let him fool you into being his slave, he likes to trick new boys into doing his drudgery.

She still slept with the Pups, usually coming in after they had gone to bed, collapsing in an exhausted heap. Always, Ace woke up when she came in, just briefly enough to ascertain who she was before falling back asleep, but he never sent her away. She couldn't face the War Boy nests yet, where the men slept in much the same manner as the Pups did, snug in their beds of clean sand. But it wasn't unexpected; sometimes when a young Pup was suddenly promoted, they stayed with their cohort for a year or more, until they felt comfortable enough to live as one of the adults, existing in a sort of transitional state.

Even then she wasn't unusual, though she felt it every day in her skin.

She had asked Ace about it when she ran into him at dinner; he had looked briefly confused, before saying, “What, cuz you're a girl? Think you're the only one?”

And then she started looking more closely at the War Boys around her. There, in the shop, another girl like her, wearing the white, her breasts bound tightly to her chest by a band that had also been smudged white like her skin. They were rare, only one or two others that she could identify, working odd jobs around the Citadel; perhaps taken up from the Wretched, bought from Bartertown, or captives of war, but like her, unable to produce, dried up inside. So like her, they ended up here, too healthy to be sent down, too useful to be discarded. The Citadel could always use another pair of hands, no matter who it belonged to. Later she found out these specialized War Boys had another use than war; they fixed machinery up in the highest echelons of the Citadel, even in the Vault itself, trusted not to touch the Wives or steal from Immortan Joe.

So she could go back there someday, Furiosa had thought. Go back. Retaliate. It was possible.

 

Furiosa glanced ahead, her goggles giving her a clear sight of the road through the stinging dust that kicked up around the convoy. Ahead and to her right was Ace, on top of the War Rig with the other Lancers, gun slung over his shoulder. A Half-life Noble clung to the side of the cab, consulting with the Imperator. 

This was one of the biggest runs of the year and the most lucrative, thus it was the most dangerous; the size of the escort was almost as big as a full War Party though not nearly as loud without the Immortan and his retinue. All runs were going to cause a commotion wherever they went, but they'd try to keep it to a minimum, to try not to attract any excess attention.

“Eyes left!” She heard the Imperator, and a moment later the Noble called out, sending the message down the line. 

“Eyes left!” Her eyes shot to the left. There, in the distance, a kick of dust, and it grew. Enemies were coming from the east, using the morning sun to hide their approach and from their trajectory, they looked to try to flank the convoy, to force them to stop. 

She reached for the lances, touching them one after another, ascertaining their readiness; they jiggled in their sheathes. 

Heart pounding, throat dry, she tasted metal. The clouds of dust grew larger as the enemies moved in on the rig, ready to intercept. From here she could see their cars, a hodgepodge mishmash of grinding metal and growling engines. 

“Bandits!” The catch-all term for seasonal alliances formed by individual road warriors and small tribes that roamed the waste. From the looks of it, they had probably spent the entire year putting this show together and were not about to disappoint the War Boys. Boldly, cars started weaving in, trying to come between the War Rig and its escort, to cut the Rig off from its defenders.

“Incoming!” Furiosa's Driver, Coil, shouted, and he jerked the car closer to the rig, positioning alongside the Bandit. She looked down and briefly made eye contact with the Bandit through the roll cage; it was muffled to the eyes in bits of rag woven into some kind of strange shroud, loose ends of it fluttering in the wind.

All this happened in an instant, and then Furiosa hefted the lance. 

“Ready to throw!” And then before the Bandit could jerk out of the way, down went the lance, and all was fire and blood.

 

The fight was quick and dirty; they took down half a dozen of the Bandits and in return, the Bandits took down one of theirs. But the Bandits couldn't keep up with the War Rig and its escort, and soon they fell back, satisfying themselves with the one car they downed, scavenging and fighting over the parts even before the War Rig was out of sight.

Furiosa snapped back to look, and then climbed up onto the roof, hanging off the edge of the open top door. “Coil! What's going to happen to Topper and his crew?”

“Probably all dead, the way their car went down. If they aren't, they will be soon.”

“Shouldn't we go back for them?”

“And risk losing the War Rig? Nah, everyone knows the risks. They're Witnessed. Riding to Valhalla now, to feast with the heroes of all time. Us too, someday, if we're lucky.” She couldn't see his expression from here, but he briefly took his hands off the wheel to make the V8 with his interlaced fingers. 

She did too. It wasn't that the gesture meant anything to her; there were other gestures that were more meaningful, gestures from her deep guarded memories that she knew were potent, more powerful than this War Boy mystery. But here, it was right to follow the custom of the land, to respect those that had gone before them.

The War Rig's horn sounded, a mournful blast. Coil brought the car a little tighter in, keeping pace. Soon, when she looked back, it was open waste again, empty, a slate wiped clean of the sins of the past.

When she could, that night, when the bright ice wheel moon stole the heat from the earth, she made that sign too, the powerful sign, grasping for a lost, intangible past and bringing it to her heart. She didn't know Topper and his crew, but they had been part of her tribe, and had given their lives in defense of her life. She owed them that much, at least.

 

They ran all night and all the next day, refueling on the go, making brief stops for maintenance, for cooling thirsty engines. She went under the hood herself, tightening bolts jiggled loose by the unrelenting rattle of the road. Lancers slept in shifts on the War Rig; she was almost jealous. A single vehicle with one Lancer didn't have that luxury; she stayed awake and alert for trouble.

They made it to Bartertown on the third day, the end of a long run.

*****

The escort formed a bristling defense around the War Rig as they stopped at the gates of Bartertown. The Half-life Noble hopped down off the rig, opening the door for the Imperator Acosta. Acosta called orders; Drivers stayed with their vehicle, guns at the ready. Half the Lancers would support the Drivers, armed to the teeth, the other half would help unload. 

The Noble pointed to her to unload. Down came boxes of produce, and quickly they were stacked as tall as her. The Bartertown guards formed an impenetrable wall between them and the common folk. The guards parted and brought out the goods; it seemed that much had been pre-arranged in advance: tires, clothing, boots, ingots of metal...more and more goods piled up beside the War Rig. Boxes and boxes of parts, shiny and chrome; two beautiful girl children, future Wives perhaps, barely marred by use, though one had a lattice of thin scars on her face; seven shackled and manacled men, strong and healthy looking, fear in their eyes; a handful of healthy young boys, barely tall enough to reach her hip, too naïve to cry. 

Furiosa's jaw tightened as she worked; so this was what it meant to have come through Bartertown. She looked away as the Imperator walked down the line, inspecting the goods for quality.

 

“There's the Thunderdome. It's stood here time out of mind,” Ace pointed it out; it had a dull gleam to it, where rusted metal had been worn smooth by the touch of many hands. “They got a law here to go with it, so don't start any trouble, eh Furiosa?” Ace sounded amused, but there would be no trouble from the people here. Despite the stinking crowds, the dangerous men that watched with thirsty, hungry eyes, all gave way to the War Boys. Whatever had happened in the past, it was obvious that no one was willing to cause trouble with those of the Citadel. There was a heady power to it, and Furiosa could feel it in her veins, the noble stride of her fellow War boys as they cut a white swathe through the crowd, examining stalls, buyers of useful miscellany with the little bit of extra that always went with them on these runs.

In the distance she saw a sign rising above the shops: Tomi Caf, and wondered what it meant.

“What are you looking for, Ace?” Furiosa stayed close by his side and wished for her gun.

Ace shrugged; that meant he didn't know what it was he was looking for until he saw it. She nodded. “You want me to be on the lookout too?”

“Eh.” He made a non-committal grunt and steered them away from the stalls.

 

They traded for the boy. It was a fast, easy transaction without much haggling, and it only cost them a bag of dried beans because he had been marred. A long, curved and puckered scar ran along the right side of his face, fresh red and livid; whatever happened had happened recently. 

“Got ourselves a good deal.” Ace kept one hand on the boy's shoulder; numbed, the boy stumbled along, as if unable to believe what had just happened. He kept glancing back, looking for something, for someone. Furiosa had to look away from him, so she turned to Ace.

“Really? You think so? What about that?” Furiosa traced her own face, miming the curvature of the scar.

“Just cuz the body's got some dents in it don't mean that the engine's no good. Can't bang out the dents on an organic body too easy, but I bet there's a thousand horsepower under this hood.” Ace patted the boy's head, ruffling the black hair fondly with his broad hand. “Just you watch, I know a good Lancer when I see it.”

“Isn't he a little old for a War Pup?”

“Aren't you?” Humor twinkled in Ace's eye, and they both grinned at each other, an old joke already.

“What's your name, pup?” The Ace stopped outside the gate, kneeling down to meet the boy's eye.

The boy shook his head, he pressed his free hand to his cheekbone. The other was chained to Ace's belt. Tears were rolling down his face, and he was trying to keep the salt from stinging his wound, damming his tears with the edge of his hand. Furiosa knelt and wiped him off with her rag; it left a black streak of machine oil along his ruddy cheek.

“Come on, you have a name, don't you?” She managed a shaky smile; in his dark blue eyes, she could see her own reflection.

He continued to cry, choked with sobs, and he looked back at Bartertown, at the stink and the tumult, and he reached back for it, for the intangible past that was still within sight.

“Pa.” She heard him say it; it was barely a whisper. Ace hadn't noticed and Furiosa felt something clutch up deep inside her, a sick, black shame. 

“We'll call you Slit then.” Ace unshackled him and picked him up, swinging the boy easily onto his shoulders. “Come on, no more tears, Slit. No more looking back.” Ace shifted the boy so that he sat more securely. “We're goin to a better place now, all us War Boys together. A green place high up off the waste. You work hard and do as you're told, hear? Now that you're one of us, you won't ever be hungry or lonely again, not for the rest of your half-life.” 

*****

Riding to Valhalla. After a day's rest, they headed off again, but not before switching her off of Coil's car and onto the War Rig. It wasn't to be a Lancer or even as a basic Revhead. It was to keep an eye on the girls, to keep them separate from the men and boys. So that's why they brought her along, she thought. Modular usage, like a wrench that in a pinch could double for metric and English. 

In the dark hold of the War Rig, she sat with them, leaning against the shuddering walls of the rig. They were beyond tears now; whatever they had already seen in their short lives had robbed them of anything but stern resignation to their fates.

“You're a girl, aren't you?” The blonde one spoke, the one with the scars; she reached out to touch Furiosa's knee, feeling the hard, sheathed wrench that lay against her leg, jutting out like bone at the bend of her knee. “A girl War Boy.”

“Yeah. So?” Her voice was harsh, even to her own ears, and Furiosa closed her mouth. The child was luminous in the flickering lamplight, and she remembered what it was like to have that kind of beauty, the kind that sapped men's strength and made them do terrible things.

“How come you're one of them?”

“Them?”

“Them.” She gestured, encompassing the War Rig, the War Boys. Even the shackled men who moaned in fear in their troubled sleep. Everyone. The entirety of mankind. “The ones who killed the world.” The child hugged her knees close to her body, cool eyes on Furiosa.

Wordless and empty, Furiosa sat back and wished for the cold night wind, the scatter of icy stars, and the turning wheel of the scarred white moon.

**Author's Note:**

> There are less people overall (including War Pups) at the Citadel in this time as they are not quite as rich and powerful as they will be by the time of Fury Road.
> 
> Ace has only recently been promoted to Half-life Noble, having made his way up through the ranks. He is not yet 'The Ace'. The previous Half-life Noble who had his job unsurprisingly went under the wheels on a different Bartertown run after gaining a reputation for being notoriously cruel.
> 
> Nux is the unnamed boy who offers Furiosa a bit of blanket.
> 
> Notch's earmark is a reference to cattle earmarks, and is named after/based on a wild rabbit I sometimes see from my window.
> 
> Quinoa is bitter if unwashed or washed insufficiently. In a world with few animals if any, the War Boys are necessarily vegan. Mother's milk is a valuable trading commodity and thus reserved for the elite.
> 
> Coil is supposed to be the Lancer on the front escort of the War Rig in the movie. He has what looks like coiled springs marked on him. Here, he's a Driver, but he ends up moving back down so by the movie, he's a Lancer. Fortunes rise and fall with War Boys like anyone else.
> 
> The Half-life Nobles are allowed to make purchases on behalf of the Citadel, as it gives them practice in barter and trade, training them for work as possible Imperators. They usually bring a Lancer along as escort.
> 
> "Tomi Caf" is the Atomic Cafe, seen in Beyond Thunderdome.
> 
> The Splendid Angharad is the unnamed girl at the very end. Of course, here she's just Angharard. Not quite the Splendid yet.
> 
> Thanks to Geoduck for comments and suggestions, and for the great discussions on world-building. I'm working on another related story to follow this one.


End file.
